Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
Atmosphere - Blog Posts
A universe in motion seen from the International Space Station during a night pass over Earth.
(@ wonderofscience on Twitter)
Timelapse created from images courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center(ISS061-E-110520-111341 eol.jsc.nasa.gov).
music for your moods part 2
a live band is playing in a bar, you haven’t slept for two days we aren’t strangers when we hold champagne chutes in our hands white bedsheets and spilled hair the lights casted on the ceiling are spinning just as we are the 10th person i’ve slashed my sword against theres a big tree in the middle of the room windows rolled down, sharp sting of the wind against my hands here comes… another one of them locked in with moving rides and flickering lights part 1
Продолжаю постить этих двоих из моей аушки/Keep posting these two from my au
Первая полноценка в жизни, я не знаю как их делать лол/it's my first big work, idk how to do it correctly lol (´༎ຶ ͜ʖ ༎ຶ `)♡
Всё чему меня научила художка это рисовать чайники, по шкале от 1 до 10 насколько Харитон похож на чайник
I've been sick for last 5 days, so feel terrible. That's all that I can do now, idk if I like it, just some unfinished sketch
A compilation of nature/landscape gifs. Here are similar compilations featured on @sixpenceee you may enjoy:
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☁️Never stop looking up☁️
I just need to know. what would happen if the ozone layer was twice as dense?
I'm late to post it, but anyway, happy Halloween to you all.
All photos made by me.
ᴵᵗ'ˢ ᶠʳᵉᵉᶻⁱⁿᵍ ⁱⁿ ʰᵉʳᵉ...
Whatever I see him - strong motherly urges awake in me
Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite
As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.
Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.
NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!
Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.
Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.
While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.
In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.
Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.
With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.
Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.
Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.
Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.
The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.
With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.
PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.
It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.
With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.
Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!
NASA Spotlight: Earth Climate Scientist Dr. Yolanda Shea
Dr. Yolanda Shea is a climate scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center. She’s the project scientist for the CLARREO Pathfinder (CPF) mission, which is an instrument that will launch to the International Space Station to measure sunlight reflected from Earth. It will help us understand how much heat is being trapped by our planet’s atmosphere. Her mission is designed to help us get a clearer picture than we currently have of the Earth’s system and how it is changing
Yolanda took time from studying our home planet to answer questions about her life and career! Get to know this Earth scientist:
What inspired you to study climate science?
Starting in early middle school I became interested in the explanations behind the weather maps and satellite images shown on TV. I liked how the meteorologists talked about the temperature, moisture, and winds at different heights in the atmosphere, and then put that together to form the story of our weather forecasts. This made me want to learn more about Earth science, so I went to college to explore this interest more.
The summer after my junior year of college, I had an internship during which my first assignment was to work with a program that estimated ocean currents from satellite measurements. I was fascinated in the fact that scientists had discovered a way to map ocean currents from space!
Although I had learned about Earth remote sensing in my classes, this was my first taste of working with, and understanding the details of, how we could learn more about different aspects of the physical world from satellite measurements.
This led to my learning about other ways we can learn about Earth from space, and that includes rigorous climate monitoring, which is the area I work in now.
What does a day in your life look like?
Before I start my workday, I like to take a few minutes to eat breakfast, knit (I’m loving sock knitting right now!), and listen to a podcast or audio book. Each workday really looks different for me, but regardless, most days are a combination of quieter moments that I can use for individual work and more interactive times when I’m interfacing with colleagues and talking about project or science issues. Both types of work are fun in different ways, but I’m glad I have a mixture because all researchers need that combination of deep thinking to wrap our minds around complex problems and also time to tackle those problems with others and work on solving them together.
When do you feel most connected to Earth?
I’ve always loved sunsets. I find them peaceful and beautiful, and I love how each one is unique. They are also a beautiful reminder of the versatility of reflected light, which I study. Sitting for a moment to appreciate the beauty and calm I feel during a sunset helps me feel connected to Earth.
What will your mission – CLARREO Pathfinder – tell us about Earth?
CLARREO Pathfinder (CPF) includes an instrument that will take measurements from the International Space Station and will measure reflected sunlight from Earth. One of its goals is to demonstrate that it can take measurements with high enough accuracy so that, if we have such measurements over long periods of time, like several decades, we could detect changes in Earth’s climate system. The CPF instrument will do this with higher accuracy than previous satellite instruments we’ve designed, and these measurements can be used to improve the accuracy of other satellite instruments.
How, if at all, has your worldview changed as a result of your work in climate science?
The longer I work in climate science and learn from the data about how humans have impacted our planet, the more I appreciate the fragility of our one and only home, and the more I want to take care of it.
What advice would you give your younger self?
It’s ok to not have everything figured out at every step of your career journey. Work hard, do your best, and enjoy the journey as it unfolds. You’ll inevitably have some surprises along the way, and regardless of whether they are welcome or not, you’re guaranteed to learn something.
Do you have a favorite metaphor or analogy that you use to describe what you do, and its impact, to those outside of the scientific community?
I see jigsaw puzzles as a good illustration of how different members of a science community play a diverse set of roles to work through different problems. Each member is often working on their own image within the greater puzzle, and although it might take them years of work to see their part of the picture come together, each image in the greater puzzle is essential to completing the whole thing. During my career, I’ll work on a section of the puzzle, and I hope to connect my section to others nearby, but we may not finish the whole puzzle. That’s ok, however, because we’ll hand over the work that we’ve accomplished to the next generation of scientists, and they will keep working to bring the picture to light. This is how I try to think about my role in climate science – I hope to contribute to the field in some way; the best thing about what I have done and what I will do, is that someone else will be able to build on my work and keep helping humanity come to a better understanding of our Earth system.
What is a course that you think should be part of required school curriculum?
Time and project management skills – I think students tend to learn these skills more organically from their parents and teachers, but in my experience I stumbled along and learned these skills through trial and error. To successfully balance all the different projects that I support now, I have to be organized and disciplined, and I need to have clear plans mapped out, so I have some idea of what’s coming and where my attention needs to be focused.
Another course not specifically related to my field is personal financial management. I was interested in personal finance, and that helped me to seek out information (mainly through various blogs) about how to be responsible with my home finances. There is a lot of information out there, but making sure that students have a solid foundation and know what questions to ask early on will set them to for success (and hopefully fewer mistakes) later on.
What’s the most unexpected time or place that your expertise in climate science and/or algorithms came in handy?
I think an interesting part of being an atmospheric scientist and a known sky-watcher is that I get to notice beautiful moments in the sky. I remember being on a trip with friends and I looked up (as I usually do), and I was gifted with a gorgeous sundog and halo arc. It was such a beautiful moment, and because I noticed it, my friends got to enjoy it too.
Can you share a photo or image from a memorable NASA project you’ve worked on, and tell us a little bit about why the project stood out to you?
I absolutely loved being on the PBS Kids TV Show, SciGirls for their episode SkyGirls! This featured a NASA program called Students’ Clouds Observations On-Line (S’COOL). It was a citizen science program where students from around the globe could take observations of clouds from the ground that coincided with satellite overpasses, and the intention was to help scientists validate (or check) the accuracy of the code they use to detect clouds from satellite measurements. I grew up watching educational programming from PBS, so it was an honor to be a science mentor on a TV show that I knew would reach children across the nation who might be interested in different STEM fields. In this photo, the three young women I worked with on the show and I are talking about the different types of clouds.
To stay up to date on Yolanda's mission and everything going on in NASA Earth science, be sure to follow NASA Earth on Twitter and Facebook.
🌎 If you're looking for Earth Day plans, we have live events, Q&As, scavenger hunts and more going on through April 24. Get the details and register for our events HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
What made you want to become a pilot for NASA? What’s your favorite part of this job?
5 Facts About Earth's Radiation Donuts 🍩
Did you know that our planet is surrounded by giant, donut-shaped clouds of radiation?
Here's what you need to know.
1. The radiation belts are a side effect of Earth's magnetic field
The Van Allen radiation belts exist because fast-moving charged particles get trapped inside Earth's natural magnetic field, forming two concentric donut-shaped clouds of radiation. Other planets with global magnetic fields, like Jupiter, also have radiation belts.
2. The radiation belts were one of our first Space Age discoveries
Earth's radiation belts were first identified in 1958 by Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite. The inner belt, composed predominantly of protons, and the outer belt, mostly electrons, would come to be named the Van Allen Belts, after James Van Allen, the scientist who led the charge designing the instruments and studying the radiation data from Explorer 1.
3. The Van Allen Probes have spent six years exploring the radiation belts
In 2012, we launched the twin Van Allen Probes to study the radiation belts. Over the past six years, these spacecraft have orbited in and out of the belts, providing brand-new data about how the radiation belts shift and change in response to solar activity and other factors.
4. Surprise! Sometimes there are three radiation belts
Shortly after launch, the Van Allen Probes detected a previously-unknown third radiation belt, created by a bout of strong solar activity. All the extra energy directed towards Earth meant that some particles trapped in our planet's magnetic field were swept out into the usually relatively empty region between the two Van Allen Belts, creating an additional radiation belt.
5. Swan song for the Van Allen Probes
Originally designed for a two-year mission, the Van Allen Probes have spent more than six years collecting data in the harsh radiation environment of the Van Allen Belts. In spring 2019, we're changing their orbit to bring the perigee — the part of the orbit where the spacecraft are closest to Earth — about 190 miles lower. This ensures that the spacecraft will eventually burn up in Earth's atmosphere, instead of orbiting forever and becoming space junk.
Because the Van Allen Probes have proven to be so hardy, they'll continue collecting data throughout the final months of the mission until they run out of fuel. As they skim through the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere, scientists and engineers will also learn more about how atmospheric oxygen can degrade satellite measurements — information that can help build better satellites in the future.
Keep up with the latest on the mission on Twitter, Facebook or nasa.gov/vanallenprobes.
Greatest Hits — Craters We Love
Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.
1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than Texas
Mercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.
For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.
2. Venus: Tough on Space Rocks
Venus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off most meteors before they reach the surface. The planet’s volcanic history has erased many of its craters, but like almost any place with solid ground in our solar system, there are still impact scars to be found. Most of what we know of Venus’ craters comes from radar images provided by orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA’s Magellan.
Mead Crater is the largest known impact site on Venus. It is about 170 miles (275 kilometers) in diameter. The relatively-flat, brighter inner floor of the crater indicates it was filled with impact melt and/or lava.
3. Earth: Still Craters After All These Years
Evidence of really big impacts — such as Arizona’s Meteor Crater — are harder to find on Earth. The impact history of our home world has largely been erased by weather and water or buried under lava, rock or ice. Nonetheless, we still find new giant craters occasionally.
A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.
This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile (31-kilometer) wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth’s ice sheets.
If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles (35 kilometers), is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.
4. Moon: Our Cratered Companion
Want to imagine what Earth might look like without its protective atmosphere, weather, water and other crater-erasing features? Look up at the Moon. The Moon’s pockmarked face offers what may be humanity’s most familiar view of impact craters.
One of the easiest to spot is Tycho, the tight circle and bright, radiating splat are easy slightly off center on the lower-left side of the full moon. Closer views of the 53-mile (85 kilometer)-wide crater from orbiting spacecraft reveal a beautiful central peak, topped with an intriguing boulder that would fill about half of a typical city block.
5. Mars: Still Taking Hits
Mars has just enough atmosphere to ensure nail-biting spacecraft landings, but not enough to prevent regular hits from falling space rocks. This dark splat on the Martian south pole is less than a year old, having formed between July and September 2018. The two-toned blast pattern tells a geologic story. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave on ice. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, blasting the dark sand underneath in all directions.
6. Ceres: What Lies Beneath
The bright spots in Ceres’ Occator crater intrigued the world from the moment the approaching Dawn spacecraft first photographed it in 2015. Closer inspection from orbit revealed the spots to be the most visible example of hundreds of bright, salty deposits that decorate the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. Thanks to Dawn, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time — processes indicative of an active, evolving world.
7. Comet Tempel 1: We Did It!
Scientists have long known we can learn a lot from impact craters — so, in 2005, they made one themselves and watched it happen.
On July 4, 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft trained its instruments on an 816-pound (370-kilogram) copper impactor as it smashed into comet Tempel 1.
One of the more surprising findings: The comet has a loose, “fluffy” structure, held together by gravity and contains a surprising amount of organic compounds that are part of the basic building blocks of life.
8. Mimas: May the 4th Be With You
Few Star Wars fans — us included — can resist Obi Wan Kenobi's memorable line “That’s no moon…” when images of Saturn’s moon Mimas pop up on a screen. Despite its Death Star-like appearance, Mimas is most definitely a moon. Our Cassini spacecraft checked, a lot — and the superlaser-looking depression is simply an 81-mile (130-kilometer) wide crater named for the moon’s discoverer, William Herschel.
9. Europa: Say What?
The Welsh name of this crater on Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa looks like a tongue-twister, but it is easiest pronounced as “pool.” Pwyll is thought to be one of the youngest features we know of on Europa. The bright splat from the impact extends more than 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) around the crater, a fresh blanket over rugged, older terrain. “Fresh,” or young, is a relative term in geology; the crater and its rays are likely millions of years old.
10. Show Us Your Greatest Hits
Got a passion for Stickney, the dominant bowl-shaped crater on one end of Mars’ moon Phobos? Or a fondness for the sponge-like abundance of impacts on Saturn’s battered moon Hyperion (pictured)? There are countless craters to choose from. Share your favorites with us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
55 Cancri e: Where Skies Sparkle Above a Never-ending Ocean of Lava
We’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – so far. These worlds are mysterious, but observations from telescopes on the ground and in space help us understand what they might look like.
Take the planet 55 Cancri e, for instance. It’s relatively close, galactically speaking, at 41 light-years away. It’s a rocky planet, nearly two times bigger than Earth, that whips around its star every 18 hours (as opposed to the 365 days it takes our planet to orbit the Sun. Slacker).
The planet’s star, 55 Cancri, is slightly smaller than our Sun, but it’s 65 times closer than the Sun is to Earth. Imagine a massive sun on the horizon! Because 55 Cancri e is so close to its star, it’s tidally locked just like our Moon is to the Earth. One side is always bathed in daylight, the other is in perpetual darkness. It’s also hot. Really hot. So hot that silicate rocks would melt into a molten ocean of melted rock. IT’S COVERED IN AN OCEAN OF LAVA. So, it’s that hot (between 3,140 degrees and 2,420 degrees F).
Scientists think 55 Cancri e also may harbor a thick atmosphere that circulates heat from the dayside to the nightside. Silicate vapor in the atmosphere could condense into sparkling clouds on the cooler, darker nightside that would reflect the lava below. It’s also possible that it would rain sand on the nightside, but … sparkling skies!
Check out our Exoplanet Travel Bureau's latest 360-degree visualization of 55 Cancri e and download the travel poster at https://go.nasa.gov/2HOyfF3.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic
This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world's northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.
This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth's magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What's it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?
Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth's magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they're the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.
The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.
They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth's atmosphere, and that's what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.
One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth's magnetic cusp.
But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth's axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.
Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they're studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they're related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.
But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it's so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.
When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it's up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.
These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.
The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in March 2019.
For even more about what it's like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist's notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4
For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.
@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science
Launching Rockets from the Top of the World 🚀
Over the next 14 months, our scientists will join a group of international researchers to explore a special region — Earth's northern polar cusp, one of just two places on our planet where particles from the Sun have direct access to our atmosphere.
Earth is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble known as a magnetosphere, which protects our planet from the hot, electrically charged stream of particles from the Sun known as the solar wind. The northern and southern polar cusps are two holes in this protection — here, Earth's magnetic field lines funnel the solar wind downwards, concentrating its energy before injecting it into Earth’s atmosphere, where it mixes and collides with particles of Earthly origin.
The cusp is the only place where dayside auroras are found — a special version of northern and southern lights, visible when the Sun is out and formed by a different process than the more familiar nighttime aurora. That's what makes this region so interesting for scientists to study: The more we learn about auroras, the more we understand about the fundamental processes that drive near-Earth space — including those processes that disrupt our technology and endanger our astronauts.
Photo credit: Violaene Kaeser
The teams working on the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp will fly sounding rockets from two Norwegian rocket ranges that fall under the cusp for a short time each day. Sounding rockets are sub-orbital rockets that shoot up into space for a few minutes before falling back to Earth, giving them access to Earth's atmosphere between 30 and 800 miles above the surface. Cheaper and faster to develop than large satellite missions, sounding rockets often carry the latest scientific instruments on their first-ever flights, allowing for unmatched speed in the turnaround from design to implementation.
Each sounding rocket mission will study a different aspect of Earth's upper atmosphere and its connection to the Sun and particles in space. Here's a look at the nine missions coming up.
1. VISIONS-2 (Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2) — December 2018
The cusp isn’t just the inroad into our atmosphere — it’s a two-way street. Counteracting the influx of particles from the Sun is a process called atmospheric escape, in which Earthly particles acquire enough energy to escape into space. Of all the particles that escape Earth’s atmosphere, there’s one that presents a particular mystery: oxygen.
At 16 times the mass of hydrogen, oxygen should be too heavy to escape Earth’s gravity. But scientists have found singly ionized oxygen in near-Earth space, which suggests that it came from Earth. The two VISIONS-2 rockets, led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will create maps of the oxygen outflow in the cusp, tracking where these heavy ions are and how they’re moving to provide a hint at how they escape.
2. TRICE-2 (Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics 2) — December 2018
If the cusp is like a funnel, then magnetic reconnection is what turns on the faucet. When the solar wind collides with Earth’s magnetic field, magnetic reconnection breaks open the previously closed magnetic field lines, allowing some solar wind particles to stream into Earth’s atmosphere through the cusp.
But researchers have noticed that the stream of particles coming in isn’t smooth: instead, it has abrupt breaks in it. Is magnetic reconnection turning on and off? Or is the solar wind shooting in from different locations? TRICE-2, led by the University of Iowa in Iowa City, will fly two separate rockets through a single magnetic field line in the cusp, to help distinguish these possibilities. If reconnection sputters on and off over time, then the two rockets should get quite different measurements, like noting how it feels to run your finger back and forth under a faucet that is being turned on and off. If instead reconnection happens consistently in multiple locations — like having ten different faucets, all running constantly — then the two rockets should have similar measurements whenever they pass through the same locations.
Magnetic reconnection is a process by which magnetic field lines explosively realign
3. CAPER-2 (Cusp Alfvén and Plasma Electrodynamics Rocket) — January 2019
The CAPER-2 rocket, led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, will examine how fast-moving electrons — particles that can trigger aurora — get up to such high speeds. The team will zero in on the role that Alfvén waves, a special kind of low-frequency wave that oscillates along magnetic field lines, play in accelerating auroral electrons.
An illustration of rippling Alfvén waves
4. G-CHASER (Grand Challenge Student Rocket) — January 2019
G-CHASER is made up entirely of student researchers from universities in the United States, Norway and Japan, many of whom are flying their experiments for the first time. The mission, led by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a collaboration between seven different student-led missions, providing a unique opportunity for students to design, test and ultimately fly their experiment from start to finish. The students involved in the mission — mostly undergraduates but including some graduate teams — are responsible for all aspects of the mission, from developing the initial idea, to securing the funding, to making sure it passes all the tests before flight.
5 & 6. AZURE (Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment) and CHI (Cusp Heating Investigation) — April & November/December 2019
When the aurora shine, they don’t just emit light — they also release thermal and kinetic energy into the atmosphere. Some of this energy escapes back into space, but some of it stays with us. Which way this balance tips depends, in part, on the winds in the cusp. AZURE, led by Clemson University in South Carolina, will measure the vertical winds that swish energy and particles around within the auroral oval, the larger ring around the pole where the aurora are most common.
Later that year, the same team will launch the CHI mission, using a methodology similar to AZURE to measure the flow of charged and neutral gases inside the cusp. The goal is to better understand how particles, flowing in horizontal and vertical directions, interact with each other to produce heating and acceleration.
7. C-REX-2 (Cusp-Region Experiment) — November 2019
The cusp is a place where strange physics happens, producing some anomalies in the physical structure of the atmosphere that can make our technology go haywire. For satellites that pass through the cusp, density increases act like potholes, shaking up their orbits. Scientists don’t currently understand what causes these density increases, but they have some clues. C-REX-2, led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, aims to figure out which variables — wind, temperature or ion velocity — are responsible.
8. ICI-5 (Investigation of Cusp Irregularities-5) — December 2019
Recent research has uncovered mysterious hot patches of turbulent plasma inside the auroral region that rain energetic particles towards Earth. GPS signals become garbled as they pass through these turbulent plasma patches, affecting so many of today’s technologies that depend on them. ICI-5, led by the University of Oslo, will launch into the cusp to take measurements from inside these hot patches. To measure their structure as several scales, the rocket will eject 12 daughter payloads in concentric squares which will achieve a variety of different separations.
9. JAXA's SS-520-3 mission — January 2020
Exploring the phenomenon of atmospheric escape, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's SS-520-3 mission will fly 500 miles high over the cusp to take measurements of the electrostatic waves that heat ions up and get them moving fast enough to escape Earth.
For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.
@NASA_Wallops | NASA's Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science
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Our New Satellite to Study the Edge of Space
We're about to launch a new satellite called ICON — the Ionospheric Connection Explorer — to study our planet's boundary to space.
The overlap between Earth's upper atmosphere and outer space is complicated and constantly changing. It's made up of a mix of neutral gas (like the air we breathe) and charged particles, where negatively charged electrons have separated from positively charged ions. This charged particle soup reacts uniquely to the changing electric and magnetic fields in near-Earth space, while weather conditions from here on Earth can also travel upwards and influence this region. This makes Earth's interface to space a dynamic, hard-to-predict region of the atmosphere.
Understanding what causes the changes in this region and how to predict them isn't just a matter of curiosity. Earth's boundary to space is home to many of our Earth-orbiting satellites, and it also plays a role in transmitting signals for communications and navigation systems. Unpredictable changes here can garble those signals and even shorten the lifetime of satellites.
ICON, launching on Nov. 7, will study this region with a unique combination of instruments. Orbiting about 360 miles above Earth, ICON will use its cameras to measure winds near the upper edge of Earth’s boundary to space and track atmospheric composition and temperature by studying a phenomenon called airglow. ICON also carries an instrument that will capture and measure the particles directly around the spacecraft, or in situ.
ICON is launching aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. On launch day, the Pegasus XL is carried out over the ocean by Northrop Grumman's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, which takes off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. About 50 miles off the coast of Florida, the Pegasus XL drops from the plane and free-falls for about five seconds before igniting and carrying ICON into low-Earth orbit.
NASA TV coverage of the launch starts at 2:45 a.m. EST on Nov. 7 at nasa.gov/live. You can also follow along with the mission on Twitter, Facebook or at nasa.gov/icon.
How Airglow Can Help Us Understand the Sun’s Influence on Earth
You may have seen the famous blue marble or pale blue dot images showing Earth from 18,000 and 3.7 billion miles away, respectively. But closer to home — some 300 miles above Earth's surface — you might encounter an unfamiliar sight: vibrant swaths of red and green or purple and yellow light emanating from the upper atmosphere.
This light is airglow.
Airglow is created when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, these atmospheric particles emit light in order to relax again. The process is similar to how auroras are created, but while auroras are driven by high-energy solar wind, airglow is energized by day-to-day solar radiation.
Since sunlight is constant, airglow constantly shines throughout Earth’s atmosphere, and the result is a tenuous bubble of light that closely encases our planet. Its light is too dim to see easily except in orbit or on the ground with clear, dark skies and a sensitive camera — it’s one-tenth as bright as the light given off by all the stars in the night sky.
Airglow highlights a key part of our atmosphere: the ionosphere. Stretching from roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth’s surface, the ionosphere is an electrified layer of the upper atmosphere generated by extreme ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. It reacts to both terrestrial weather below and solar energy streaming in from above, forming a complex space weather system. Turbulence in this ever-changing sea of charged particles can manifest as disruptions that interfere with Earth-orbiting satellites or communication and navigation signals.
Understanding the ionosphere’s extreme variability is tricky because it requires untangling interactions between the different factors at play — interactions of which we don’t have a clear picture. That’s where airglow comes in. Each atmospheric gas has its own favored airglow color, hangs out at a different height and creates airglow by a different process, so we can use airglow to study different layers of the atmosphere.
Airglow carries information on the upper atmosphere’s temperature, density, and composition, but it also helps us trace how particles move through the region itself. Vast, high-altitude winds sweep through the ionosphere, pushing its contents around the globe — and airglow’s subtle dance follows their lead, highlighting global patterns.
Two NASA missions take advantage of precisely this effect to study the upper atmosphere: ICON — short for Ionospheric Connection Explorer — and GOLD — Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk.
ICON focuses on how charged and neutral gases in the upper atmosphere behave and interact, while GOLD observes what drives change — the Sun, Earth’s magnetic field or the lower atmosphere — in the region.
By imaging airglow, the two missions will enable scientists to tease out how space and Earth’s weather intersect, dictating the region’s complex behavior.
Keep up with the latest in NASA's airglow and upper atmosphere research on Twitter and Facebook or at nasa.gov/sunearth.
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What Can We Learn from the Universe’s Baby Picture?
If you look at your baby photos, you might see hints of the person you are today — a certain look in the eyes, maybe the hint of your future nose or ears. In the same way, scientists examine the universe’s “baby picture” for clues about how it grew into the cosmos we know now. This baby photo is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a faint glow that permeates the universe in all directions.
In late September, NASA plans to launch a balloon-based astronomical observatory from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, to study the universe’s baby picture. Meet PIPER! The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer will fly at the edge of our atmosphere to look for subtle patterns in the CMB.
The CMB is cold. Really, really cold. The average temperature is around minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. It formed 380,000 years after the big bang, which scientists think happened about 13.8 billion years ago. When it was first discovered, the CMB temperature looked very uniform, but researchers later found there are slight variations like hot and cold spots. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe that we can see. Anything before the CMB is foggy — literally.
Credit: Rob van Hal
Before the CMB, the universe was a fog of hot, dense plasma. (By hot, we’re talking about 500 million degrees F.) That’s so hot that atoms couldn’t exist yet – there was just a soup of electrons and protons. Electrons are great at deflecting light. So, any light that existed in the first few hundred thousand years after the big bang couldn’t travel very far before bouncing off electrons, similar to the way a car’s headlights get diffused in fog.
After the big bang, the universe started expanding rapidly in all directions. This expansion is still happening today. As the universe continued to expand, it cooled. By the time the universe reached its 380,000th birthday, it had cooled enough that electrons and protons could combine into hydrogen atoms for the first time. (Scientists call this era recombination.) Hydrogen atoms don’t deflect light nearly as well as loose electrons and the fog lifted. Light could now travel long distances across the universe.
The light we see in the CMB comes from the recombination era. As it traveled across the universe, through the formation of stars and galaxies, it lost energy. Now we observe it in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is less energetic than visible light and therefore invisible to our eyes. The first baby photo of the CMB – really, a map of the sky in microwaves – came from our Cosmic Background Explorer, which operated from 1989 to 1993.
Why are we so interested in the universe’s baby picture? Well, it’s helped us learn a lot about the structure of the universe around us today. For example, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe produced a detailed map of the CMB and helped us learn that the universe is 68 percent dark energy, 27 percent dark matter and just 5 percent normal matter — the stuff that you and stars are made of.
Right after the big bang, we’re pretty sure the universe was tiny. Really tiny. Everything we see today would have been stuffed into something smaller than a proton. If the universe started out that small, then it would have followed the rules of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics allows all sorts of strange things to happen. Matter and energy can be “borrowed” from the future then crash back into nothingness. And then cosmic inflation happened and the universe suddenly expanded by a trillion trillion times.
All this chaos creates a sea of gravitational waves. (These are called “primordial” gravitational waves and come from a different source than the gravitational waves you may have heard about from merging neutron stars and black holes.) The signal of the primordial gravitational waves is a bit like white noise, where the signal from merging dead stars is like a whistle you can pick up over the noise.
These gravitational waves filled the baby universe and created distinct patterns, called B-mode polarization, in the CMB light. These patterns have handedness, which means even though they’re mirror images of each other, they’re not symmetrical — like trying to wear a left-hand glove on your right hand. They’re distinct from another kind of polarization called E-mode, which is symmetrical and echoes the distribution of matter in the universe.
That’s where PIPER comes in. PIPER’s two telescopes sit in a hot-tub-sized container of liquid helium, which runs about minus 452 degrees F. It’ll look at 85 percent of the sky and is extremely sensitive, so it will help us learn even more about the early days of the universe. By telling us more about polarization and those primordial gravitational waves, PIPER will help us understand how the early universe grew from that first baby picture.
PIPER’s first launch window in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is in late September. When it’s getting ready to launch, you’ll be able to watch the balloon being filled on the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website. Follow NASA Blueshift on Twitter or Facebook for updates about PIPER and when the livestream will be available.
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Packing for a Journey into the Twilight Zone
Submitted for your consideration: A team of researchers from more than 20 institutions, boarding two research vessels, heading into the ocean’s twilight zone.
The twilight zone is a dimly lit region between 650 and 3300 feet below the surface, where we’re unfolding the mystery of how tiny ocean organisms affect our planet’s climate.
These tiny organisms – called phytoplankton – are plant-like and mostly single-celled. They live in water, taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.
Two boats, more than 100 researchers from more than 20 partner institutions, and a whole fleet of robotic explorers make up the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) team. We’re learning more about what happens to carbon dioxide after phytoplankton digest it.
The Equipment to Find Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton have predators in the ocean called zooplankton. They absorb the phytoplankton’s carbon, carrying it up the food chain. The EXPORTS mission will focus partly on how that happens in the ocean’s twilight zone, where some zooplankton live. When phytoplankton die, sometimes their bodies sink through the same area. All of this carries carbon dioxide into the ocean’s depths and out of Earth’s atmosphere.
Counting Life
Studying the diversity of these organisms is important to better understand what’s happening to the phytoplankton as they die. Researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science are using a very fine mesh net to sample water at various depths throughout the ocean to count various plankton populations.
Researchers from the University of Rhode Island are bringing the tools to sequence the DNA of phytoplankton and zooplankton to help count these organism populations, getting a closer look at what lives below the ocean’s surface.
Science at 500 Feet
Taking measurements at various depths is important, because phytoplankton, like plants, use sunlight to digest carbon dioxide. That means that phytoplankton at different levels in the ocean absorb and digest carbon differently. We’re bringing a Wirewalker, an instrument that glides up and down along a vertical wire to take in water samples all along its 500-foot long tether.
This journey to the twilight zone will take about thirty days, but we’ll be sending back dispatches from the ships. Follow along as we dive into ocean diversity on our Earth Expeditions blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions.
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Cracking Earth’s Carbon Puzzle
It’s a scientific conundrum with huge implications for our future: How will our planet react to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
Carbon – an essential building block for life – does not stay in one place or take only one form. Carbon, both from natural and human-caused sources, moves within and among the atmosphere, ocean and land.
We’ve been a trailblazer in using space-based and airborne sensors to observe and quantify carbon in the atmosphere and throughout the land and ocean, working with many U.S. and international partners.
Our Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is making unprecedented, accurate global measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and providing unique information on associated natural processes.
ABoVE, our multi-year field campaign in Alaska and Canada is investigating how changes in Arctic ecosystems such as boreal forests in a warming climate result in changes to the balance of carbon moving between the atmosphere and land.
This August we’re embarking on an ocean expedition with the National Science Foundation to the northeast Pacific called EXPORTS that will help scientists develop the capability to better predict how carbon in the ocean moves, which could change as Earth’s climate changes.
ECOSTRESS is slated to launch this summer to the International Space Station to make the first-ever measurements of plant water use and vegetation stress on land – providing key insights into how plants link Earth’s global carbon cycle with its water cycle.
Later this year, ECOSTRESS will be joined on the space station by GEDI, which will use a space borne laser to help estimate how much carbon is locked in forests and how that quantity changes over time.
In early 2019, the OCO-3 instrument is scheduled to launch to the space station to complement OCO-2 observations and allow scientists to probe the daily cycle of carbon dioxide exchange processes over much of the Earth.
And still in the early stages of development is the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb) satellite, planned to launch in the early 2020s. GeoCarb will collect 10 million observations a day of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide.
Our emphasis on carbon cycle science and the development of new carbon-monitoring tools is expected to remain a top priority for years to come. READ MORE.
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10 Ways to BBQ on an Alien World
There are over 3,700 planets in our galaxy. Many of them orbit stars outside our solar system, these are known as exoplanets. Spend a summer weekend barbecuing it up on any of these alien worlds.
(WARNING: Don't try any of this on Earth—except the last one.)
1. Lava World
Janssen aka 55 Cancri e
Hang your steak on a fishing pole and dangle your meat over the boiling pools of lava on this possible magma world. Try two to three minutes on each side to get an ashy feast of deliciousness.
2. Hot Jupiter
Dimidium aka 51 Pegasi b
Set your grill to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius) or hop onto the first exoplanet discovered and get a perfect char on your hot dogs. By the time your dogs are done, it’ll be New Year’s Eve, because a year on this planet is only four days long.
3. Super Earth
HD 40307 g
Super air fry your duck on this Super Earth, as you skydive in the intense gravity of a planet twice as massive as Earth. Why are you air frying a duck? We don’t know. Why are you skydiving on an exoplanet? We’re not judging.
4. Lightning Neptune
HAT-P-11b
I’ve got steaks, they’re multiplying/and I’m looooosing control. Cause the power this planet is supplying/is electrifying!
Sear your tuna to perfection in the lightning strikes that could flash across the stormy skies of this Neptune-like planet named HAT-P-11b.
5. Red Earth
Kepler-186f
Tired of all that meat? Try a multi-colored salad with the vibrant plants that could grow under the red sun of this Earth-sized planet. But it could also be a lifeless rock, so BYOB (bring your own barbecue).
6. Inferno World
Kepler-70b
Don’t take too long to prep your vegetables for the grill! The hottest planet on record will flash-incinerate your veggies in seconds!
7. Egg-shaped
WASP-12b
Picture this: You are pressure cooking your chicken on a hot gas giant in the shape of an egg. And you’re under pressure to cook fast, because this gas giant is being pulled apart by its nearby star.
8. Two suns
Kepler-16b
Evenly cook your ribs in a dual convection oven under the dual stars of this “Tatooine.” Kick back and watch your two shadows grow in the fading light of a double sunset.
9. Takeout
Venus
Order in for a staycation in our own solar system. The smell of rotten eggs rising from the clouds of sulfuric acid and choking carbon dioxide will put you off cooking, so get that meal to go.
10. Take a Breath
Earth
Sometimes the best vacations are the ones you take at home. Flip your burgers on the only planet where you can breathe the atmosphere.
Grill us on Twitter and tell us how bad our jokes are.
Read the full version of this week’s ‘Solar System: 10 Things to Know’ Article HERE.
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Solar System 10 Things to Know: Planetary Atmospheres
Every time you take a breath of fresh air, it’s easy to forget you can safely do so because of Earth’s atmosphere. Life on Earth could not exist without that protective cover that keeps us warm, allows us to breathe and protects us from harmful radiation—among other things.
What makes Earth’s atmosphere special, and how do other planets’ atmospheres compare? Here are 10 tidbits:
1. On Earth, we live in the troposphere, the closest atmospheric layer to Earth’s surface. “Tropos” means “change,” and the name reflects our constantly changing weather and mixture of gases.
It’s 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) thick, depending on where you are on Earth, and it’s the densest layer of atmosphere. When we breathe, we’re taking in an air mixture of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent argon, water vapor and carbon dioxide. More on Earth’s atmosphere›
2. Mars has a very thin atmosphere, nearly all carbon dioxide. Because of the Red Planet’s low atmospheric pressure, and with little methane or water vapor to reinforce the weak greenhouse effect (warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from the planet toward space), Mars’ surface remains quite cold, the average surface temperature being about -82 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 63 degrees Celsius). More on the greenhouse effect›
3. Venus’ atmosphere, like Mars’, is nearly all carbon dioxide. However, Venus has about 154,000 times more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than Earth (and about 19,000 times more than Mars does), producing a runaway greenhouse effect and a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead. A runaway greenhouse effect is when a planet’s atmosphere and surface temperature keep increasing until the surface gets so hot that its oceans boil away. More on the greenhouse effect›
4. Jupiter likely has three distinct cloud layers (composed of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water) in its "skies" that, taken together, span an altitude range of about 44 miles (71 kilometers). The planet's fast rotation—spinning once every 10 hours—creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones wrapping around the circumference of the planet. More on Jupiter›
5. Saturn’s atmosphere—where our Cassini spacecraft ended its 13 extraordinary years of exploration of the planet—has a few unusual features. Its winds are among the fastest in the solar system, reaching speeds of 1,118 miles (1,800 kilometers) per hour. Saturn may be the only planet in our solar system with a warm polar vortex (a mass of swirling atmospheric gas around the pole) at both the North and South poles. Also, the vortices have “eye-wall clouds,” making them hurricane-like systems like those on Earth.
Another uniquely striking feature is a hexagon-shaped jet streamencircling the North Pole. In addition, about every 20 to 30 Earth years, Saturn hosts a megastorm (a great storm that can last many months). More on Saturn›
6. Uranus gets its signature blue-green color from the cold methane gas in its atmosphere and a lack of high clouds. The planet’s minimum troposphere temperature is 49 Kelvin (minus 224.2 degrees Celsius), making it even colder than Neptune in some places. Its winds move backward at the equator, blowing against the planet’s rotation. Closer to the poles, winds shift forward and flow with the planet’s rotation. More on Uranus›
7. Neptune is the windiest planet in our solar system. Despite its great distance and low energy input from the Sun, wind speeds at Neptune surpass 1,200 miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per hour), making them three times stronger than Jupiter’s and nine times stronger than Earth’s. Even Earth's most powerful winds hit only about 250 miles per hour (400 kilometers per hour). Also, Neptune’s atmosphere is blue for the very same reasons as Uranus’ atmosphere. More on Neptune›
8. WASP-39b, a hot, bloated, Saturn-like exoplanet (planet outside of our solar system) some 700 light-years away, apparently has a lot of water in its atmosphere. In fact, scientists estimate that it has about three times as much water as Saturn does. More on this exoplanet›
9. A weather forecast on “hot Jupiters”—blistering, Jupiter-like exoplanets that orbit very close to their stars—might mention cloudy nights and sunny days, with highs of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,300 degrees Celsius, or 1,600 Kelvin). Their cloud composition depends on their temperature, and studies suggest that the clouds are unevenly distributed. More on these exoplanets›
10. 55 Cancri e, a “super Earth” exoplanet (a planet outside of our solar system with a diameter between Earth’s and Neptune’s) that may be covered in lava, likely has an atmosphere containing nitrogen, water and even oxygen–molecules found in our atmosphere–but with much higher temperatures throughout. Orbiting so close to its host star, the planet could not maintain liquid water and likely would not be able to support life. More on this exoplanet›
Read the full version of this week’s Solar System 10 Things to Know HERE.
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Science-Heavy SpaceX Dragon Headed to Space Station
Heads up: a new batch of science is headed to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon on April 2, 2018. Launching from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket, this fire breathing (well, kinda…) spacecraft will deliver science that studies thunderstorms on Earth, space gardening, potential pathogens in space, new ways to patch up wounds and more.
Let's break down some of that super cool science heading 250 miles above Earth to the orbiting laboratory:
Sprites and Elves in Space
Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) experiment will survey severe thunderstorms in Earth's atmosphere and upper-atmospheric lightning, or transient luminous events.
These include sprites, flashes caused by electrical break-down in the mesosphere; the blue jet, a discharge from cloud tops upward into the stratosphere; and ELVES, concentric rings of emissions caused by an electromagnetic pulse in the ionosphere.
Here's a graphic showing the layers of the atmosphere for reference:
Metal Powder Fabrication
Our Sample Cartridge Assembly (MSL SCA-GEDS-German) experiment will determine underlying scientific principles for a fabrication process known as liquid phase sintering, in microgravity and Earth-gravity conditions.
Science term of the day: Liquid phase sintering works like building a sandcastle with just-wet-enough sand; heating a powder forms interparticle bonds and formation of a liquid phase accelerates this solidification, creating a rigid structure. But in microgravity, settling of powder grains does not occur and larger pores form, creating more porous and distorted samples than Earth-based sintering.
Sintering has many applications on Earth, including metal cutting tools, automotive engine connecting rods, and self-lubricating bearings. It has potential as a way to perform in-space fabrication and repair, such as building structures on the moon or creating replacement parts during extraterrestrial exploration.
Plants in space! It's l[a]unch time!
Understanding how plants respond to microgravity and demonstrating reliable vegetable production in space represent important steps toward the goal of growing food for future long-duration missions. The Veggie Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (Veggie PONDS) experiment will test a passive nutrient delivery system in the station's Veggie plant growth facility by cultivating lettuce and mizuna greens for harvest and consumption on orbit.
The PONDS design features low mass and low maintenance, requires no additional energy, and interfaces with the Veggie hardware, accommodating a variety of plant types and growth media.
Quick Science Tip: Download the Plant Growth App to grow your own veggies in space! Apple users can download the app HERE! Android users click HERE!
Testing Materials in Space
The Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility (MISSE-FF) experiment will provide a unique platform for testing how materials, coatings and components react in the harsh environment of space.
A continuation of a previous experiment, this version's new design eliminates the need for astronauts to perform spacewalks for these investigations. New technology includes power and data collection options and the ability to take pictures of each sample on a monthly basis, or more often if required. The testing benefits a variety of industries, including automotive, aeronautics, energy, space, and transportation.
New Ways to Develop Drugs in Space
Microgravity affects movement and effectiveness of drugs in unique ways. Microgravity studies already have resulted in innovative medicines to treat cancer, for example. The Metabolic Tracking investigation determines the possibility of developing improved drugs in microgravity, using a new method to test the metabolic impacts of drug compounds. This could lead to more effective, less expensive drugs.
Follow @ISS_Research on Twitter for your daily dose of nerdy, spacey goodness.
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